If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took his lead from BC Premier David Eby, he might actually win points with the public. A series of blunders on his watch has made a mess of our media, which already needed a lot of cleaning up, so a very hard line against behemoths such as Bell may be needed now more than ever.
  • streetfestivalEnglish
    5·
    9 months ago

    [David Eby, BC’s new NDP premier] was as outraged as most Canadians were when the news came down that Bell Media was axing 4,800 employees, fully nine percent of its workforce, selling 45 of its 103 radio stations and cutting its weekend and noon-hour CTV newscasts. “On behalf of all British Columbians that have watched their local news station slowly turn to garbage by these companies … I just want to say: shame on you,” a visibly upset Eby said off the cuff at a press conference on an unrelated matter. He referred to media owners as “corporate vampires” that have “overseen the encrapification of local news” and added that “the impact on communities in British Columbia of their unrestrained corporate greed … is profound.”

    Federal Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge also criticized Bell for breaking its promise to invest in news and noted that the Online Streaming Act, which came into effect last year, abolished fees that will save the company $40 million a year while it will also benefit from the $30 million allocated to broadcasting from the $100 million Google has promised in annual funding under the new Online News Act. “They are not going bankrupt,” she said. “They’re still making billions of dollars. They’re still a very profitable company and they still have the capacity and the means to hold their end of the bargain, which is to deliver news reports.

    Bell is one of Canada’s most profitable companies, as its 2023 operating earnings rose to $10.4 billion from $10.2 billion in 2022, while its profit margin held steady at 42.2 percent.

    Bell’s telecom division makes a profit margin of more than 44 percent because Canadians pay among the highest prices in the world for cell phone service, cable TV and Internet access.

    If its latest cutbacks sound familiar, it’s because Bell made similar deep cuts just last June, laying off 1,300 from its Bell Media division, shuttering CTV’s bureaus in London and Los Angeles and closing six radio stations, including two in Vancouver. It also laid off hundreds of workers abruptly in 2021 and closed several radio stations.

    Canada has been called “three telcos in a trenchcoat” for the enormous power the country’s media giants wield, but that number fell last year when the toothless Competition Bureau proved unable to prevent Rogers, the country’s second-largest media company, from taking over Shaw, which dominated cable TV in Western Canada.